Battle looms over Perkins loans

BATTLE OVER PERKINS LOANS LOOMS AHEAD: Two years after Congress let the federal Perkins loan program expire — and then revived it two-and-half-months later — lawmakers face another looming deadline over how to deal with the decades-old program. The program, under which more than 315,000 students received low-interest loans based on financial need in the past fiscal year, is slated to expire on Sept. 30 unless Congress acts.

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— There’s already a bipartisan bill in the House to extend the program for another two years — and colleges and universities and other student aid advocates are expected to ramp up their lobbying efforts to support it in the coming weeks. The bill, H.R. 2482 (115), introduced in May by Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.), has so far picked up 77 co-sponsors in the House (59 Democrats and 18 Republicans).

— But passing an extension through Congress before the end of September is a tall order. Some GOP lawmakers have previously opposed keeping Perkins loans, which account for less than 1 percent of all federal student aid, as they seek to streamline student loan programs. Among the most significant: Sen. Lamar Alexander, chairman of the Senate education committee, who blocked a full extension of Perkins loans in 2015 and then agreed to a compromise to revive a scaled-back version. Alexander pitched the two-year extension in 2015 as a phase-out of the program, and it even included a requirement that colleges notify students that the program is coming to an end this fall.

— Another key decision-maker: Rep. Virginia Foxx, Republican chair of the House education committee, hasn’t yet said where she stands on extending the program this time around. A GOP committee aide told Morning Education that “the committee is continuing to explore moving towards a simplified student aid system with only one grant, one loan, and one work study program, and we hope to address these reforms through” reauthorization of the Higher Education Act.

— President Donald Trump’s budget, meanwhile, assumed the Perkins loan program would expire, and didn’t propose an extension. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos hasn’t discussed the program publicly but she, too, has indicated she’d like to streamline student aid programs.

— Harrison M. Wadsworth III, executive director of the Coalition of Higher Education Assistance Organizations, which lobbies for the Perkins program on behalf of colleges and universities, says Congress should again extend the program until it can address it as part of a broader aid simplification effort in the reauthorization of the HEA. “Here we are two years later in exactly the same situation where we then,” he said. “HEA hasn’t moved and it doesn’t seem like it’s about to move.”

— Justin Draeger, president and CEO of the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators, tells Morning Education that he’s pushing for an extension of Perkins but acknowledges the outlook for the program is somewhat grim. “If we were going up a steep hill the last time, it’s sort of like we’re going up a wall this time,” Draeger said.

— The main challenge for proponents of Perkins is finding a way to fund its extension. Congress hasn’t appropriated any money for Perkins Loans since 2004; the 1,500 colleges participating in the program make new loans using their own funds and the money repaid by students in previous years. But the Congressional Budget Office counts the extension as a cost because of the revenue the federal government is losing out on by continuing the program and not recouping the revolving federal funds from schools. Lawmakers paid for the last extension in 2015 by eliminating the loans for graduate students and trimming some other benefits.

CATCHING UP WITH ROBERTO RODRIGUEZ: President Barack Obama’s education adviser, Roberto Rodríguez, will take the helm of the nonprofit Teach Plus next month. One of his goals is to connect more teachers to policymaking. “We’ve had a disconnect between the policy conversations in Washington and what’s going on in the field with teacher policy and development,” Rodríguez told Morning Education. “There aren’t enough opportunities for teachers to get involved and I think Teach Plus can be part of that.” Teach Plus offers fellowships and works to ensure that teachers have access to leadership training, and that disadvantaged students have access to effective teachers. Rodríguez said the nonprofit is focused on building and strengthening the teaching profession, in addition to improving teacher retention, among other things.

— Rodríguez comes to Teach Plus after years of leading Obama’s education agenda. Near the end of Obama’s second term, much of Rodríguez’s focus was on implementing the Every Student Succeeds Act. Teachers and school administrators often didn’t feel like they had much of a voice under No Child Left Behind, Rodríguez said, adding “We need a different experience under ESSA.” Rodríguez said that’s happening in some states, where teachers have been consulted in the development of plans and feel ownership. “A key point to the promise of ESSA: it has to be owned and realized by the communities it serves,” he said. “States are owning the planning process under ESSA in a way that they haven’t before.”

— That said, it’s unsurprising Rodríguez isn’t entirely pleased with how ESSA implementation is going under the Trump administration. “I was disappointed that the regulatory framework that our administration worked so hard to put into place didn’t take full shape under this administration,” he said, referring to a successful GOP effort earlier this year to scrap Obama regulations for holding schools accountable under the law. Without regulations, Rodríguez said, DeVos should issue guidelines to clarify parts of the law. “States need guidance and clarification, and absent guidance and clarification, there will be confusion and inconsistency in decision-making,” he said. “That not only will be true under this administration, but that was true under the Bush administration as the implementation of No Child Left Behind started rolling out.” (DeVos’ department has said federal officials are evaluating where states may need additional guidance.) Still, Rodríguez said he has been “encouraged” by some of the feedback the Education Department has given to states. “It doesn’t appear to me that Secretary DeVos’ department is rubber-stamping those plans,” he said.

— Teach Plus is also closely watching the appropriations process, Rodríguez said. “There’s a greater need for Title I funding” for poor students, he said. And the proposed elimination of more than $2 billion in funding for teacher training by Trump and House appropriators has been troubling, he said. “We have the best aspirations and goals for what our public education system could be and should be, but the other half of that equation is providing the resources needed to get there,” Rodríguez said.

THE STATE OF PUBLIC SCHOOL PRINCIPALS: About 78 percent of more than 90,000 principals leading U.S. public schools during the 2015-16 school year were white, according to a report out today from the National Center for Education Statistics. Just 11 percent of them were black and 8 percent were Hispanic. More than half were women. Women were also more likely to be principals of elementary schools, rather than middle or high schools. Public school principals on average received a salary of $95,700 and worked an average of 58.6 hours per week. The report says that “on average, principals spent about 30 percent of their time on internal administrative tasks, 30 percent of their time on curriculum and teaching-related tasks, 23 percent of their time on student interactions, and 14 percent of their time on parent interactions.” Read more.

STAT OF THE DAY: Sixty-five percent of the more than 575,000 American students who earned associate’s degrees in the 2010-11 school year went on to enroll in a four-year institution, and 41 percent of them earned a bachelor’s degree. That’s according to a new report from the National Student Clearinghouse. “These numbers show the importance of associate degrees and certificates as access pathways leading to further degrees,” Doug Shapiro, executive research director of the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center, said in a statement. “For students who cannot or choose not to start in a four-year institution, lower-cost, shorter-term credentials provide critical on-ramps to higher educational attainment.”

— The new data comes as the Trump administration tries to shift the focus from traditional four-year paths for higher education. “I think we should be emphasizing the multitude of pathways to higher education, recognizing and acknowledging that we have many different kinds of students, many different personalities,” DeVos said last week after touring several programs offered at Grand Rapids Community College, according to the Detroit Free Press. “I’ve heard from many students who have originally pursued a four-year college or university program only to find out that they didn’t like sitting at a desk job. We need to not only support and encourage those opportunities, but to also make sure students know about the multitude of options.”

GUIDANCE FOR FAFSA TOOL’S NEW SECURITY FEATURES: The Education Department on Monday issued technical guidance for colleges and universities on how to deal with the federal government’s planned new security measures for the IRS Data Retrieval Tool, which helps students apply for federal aid. The Education Department and IRS suspended access to the tool earlier this year over concerns that identity thieves were misusing the tool to obtain taxpayer information. The department has said it expects the tool to be back up and running for aid applicants by the 2018-19 Free Application for Federal Student Aid cycle, which begins on Oct. 1. Read the technical guidance to schools about some updated security features here.

REPORT ROLL CALL

— The Education Commission of the States released a new report that looks at education governance structures in states.

SYLLABUS

— Group seeking to repeal Arizona school voucher law says it has collected enough signatures to stop the measure from taking effect and put it to a vote in 2018: The Associated Press.

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About The Author

Michael Stratford is an education reporter for POLITICO Pro. He most recently covered federal higher education policy and student loans at Inside Higher Ed, with previous bylines at The Associated Press, The Chronicle of Higher Education, and Kiplinger’s Personal Finance magazine. Stratford grew up in Belmont, Mass. and graduated from Cornell University, where he was managing editor of The Cornell Daily Sun.